LOT DETAILS

Materials:

watercolor and pen and ink on paper laid down on the artist's mount

Size Notes:

image; artist's mount: 26.5 x 34.4 cm

Markings:

signed 'Klee' (lower left), inscribed 'Schlussszene eines Dramas' (upper centre), dated, numbered and inscribed '1920.162. Drama Aktschluss' (on the artist's mount; lower left)

Exhibited:

Hollywood, Braxton Gallery, The Blue Four, May 1930, no. 6. San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Blue Four, April - May 1931, no. 8. Oakland, The Oakland Art Gallery, The Blue Four, August - September 1931, no. 20. San Francisco, Museum of Art, Paul Klee, January - February 1937. Oakland, Mills College Art Gallery, European Master Drawings of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, February - March 1939, no. 61; this exhibition later travelled to Seattle, Art Museum, April - May 1939. New York, Saidenberg Gallery, Paul Klee, Third Bi-annual Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, November - December 1957, no. 11.

Literature:

N. Sawelson-Gorse, 'Kleine Kreise und brüchige Bündnisse: Galka Scheyer und amerikanische Sammler der “Blauen Vier”', in exh. cat., Die Blaue Vier, Feininger, Jawlensky Kandinsky, Klee in der Neuen Welt, Bern, 1997, pp. 58-61. The Paul Klee Foundation, ed., Paul Klee, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III, 1919-1922, Bern, 1999, no. 2507, p. 231 (illustrated).

Provenance:

Emmy 'Galka' Scheyer, San Francisco & Los Angeles, 1928-1931. Charlotte Mack, San Francisco, by 1931. Herschel B. Freeman, until 1961. Saidenberg Gallery, Inc., New York, in 1961. Taft Schreiber, Beverly Hills, by whom acquired in 1961. Gallery Stephen Hahn, New York, until 1972. Berggruen & Cie, Paris, 1972-1975. Joachim Hermann, by whom acquired from the above in the 1970s. Geerte Murmann, Troisdorf, a gift from the above in 1986, and thence by descent to the present owners.